Patriotic Democrats, Perversely Pragmatic AND Doggedly Resisting the Vichys, DINOs, Blue Dogs, Triangulators, and DLC Accommodationists.
And Still Dogging Joe Lieberman Until He's Festering in His Political Grave, of course.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Shameless, Lacking Common Sense, Utterly Oblivious... Or All Of the Above?

I really hate beating the "plagiarism" meme any more, but Hillary Clinton made me do it. Here's new news today that voters in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island might want to think about:

Then, in their most recent debate on Feb. 21, Hillary Clinton nevertheless tried out a pre-scripted line reiterating the plagiarism charge -- even though her campaign had gone on record saying it wasn't trying to spread the plagiarism charge and even though, since she knew Patrick had given it to Obama, it wasn't plagiarism at all and her only beef could be that he had used it without attribution. (As if speeches have footnotes: Politician: "My opponent's accusations that I'm guilty of plagiarism are much ado about nothing. (fn.: Wm. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing)".)

We all know that's not practical, and that speechwriters and politicans swap lines all the time, and that if a friend says -- as happened here -- hey, I used a great line in my last campaign that nicely summarizes the point you're trying to make, why don't you use it? -- you don't point it out, you just use it. No big deal. As Kris Kristofferson wrote, it's not a big deal, so instead of always arguing, "let's settle down and steal each other's songs."

The audience at the debate understood this, and booed Clinton when she trotted out the line about Obama "xeroxing" (hey -- that's trademarked? did she credit Xerox Corp.?) part of one of his speeches.

At THIS point, everything having to do with lifting lines from other people's speeches is REALLY done with, over, and kaput. It has to be, right? Pretend you're Hillary Clinton. Your sketchy effort to brand Obama a plagiarist drew boos, everyone wants the plagiarism issue set aside, your own "borrowing" of lines from other politicians' speeches without attributing them got caught and youwere publicly (if not privately, as you should have been) embarrassed. What would you do next? It's obvious: you'd work with your speechwriters to come up with a couple good news applause lines and you'd put this whole mess behind you. Pretty basic politics, pretty basic human ethics, pretty basic common sense.

What does Hillary Clinton do, instead? That's what this post is about:

It's as if she recognizes neither (a) her own hypocrisy in the last debate, nor (b) how sick the public is of this stuff now, nor (c) how much this will help the Obama campaign, because just yesterday she renewed her attacks on his ethics, and people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

For voters in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, and Vermont, this raises a couple of fundamental questions:

(a) is this someone you think really IS, as she claims, capable of running a smart, efficient campaign against the well-honed Republican machine?

(b) is this a person with the common sense, the character, and the insight to run our nation well?BACK TO VICHYDEMS HOME

3 comments:

Just shows how bankrupts and desperate Hillary's campaign is. They out-flanked their own base on the right in their attempt to win the conservatives and independents. Which really pissed of what should have been their own base.

Might have been a good general election strategy if they had made it through the primaries.

Servant: ha!! It's sad: she just had this sense of entitlement which misled her into thinking it would be easy. But it's also good to learn this about her now -- we really do want a realist both on the campaign trail and in the Oval Office, and for all Hillary's smarts, her campaign has showed she's capable of letting self-delusion interfere with good strategy.

Will this be the downfall of the DLC's power, too? That's what my earlier concerns about Obama were based on -- asking whether he'd hew to the Clinton/DLC/accommodationist line, or blaze a new trail. I think he's answering that question every day, now.